took a small silk
packet, opened it, and spilled a few clear grains on his hand. It was
the antidote.

He waited two days, while on all sides the rumour of the Bill grew
stronger and its provisions more stringent. Then he hesitated no
longer, but sent for Lord Caerlaverock's cook.

V

I conceive that the drug did not create new opinions, but elicited
those which had hitherto lain dormant. Every man has a creed, but in
his soul he knows that that creed has another side, possibly not less
logical, which it does not suit him to produce. Our most honest
convictions are not the children of pure reason, but of temperament,
environment, necessity, and interest. Most of us take sides in life
and forget the one we reject. But our conscience tells us it is there,
and we can on occasion state it with a fairness and fulness which
proves that it is not wholly repellent to our reason. During the
crisis I write of, the attitude of Cargill and Vennard was not that of
roysterers out for irresponsible mischief. They were eminently
reasonable and wonderfully logical, and in private conversation they
gave their opponents a very bad time. Cargill, who had hitherto been
the hope of the extreme Free-traders, wrote an article for the
Quarterly on Tariff Reform. It was set up, but long before it could be
used it was cancelled and the type scattered. I have seen a proof of
it, however, and I confess I have never read a more brilliant defence
of a doctrine which the author had hitherto described as a childish
heresy. Which proves my contention--that Cargill all along knew that
there was a case against Free Trade, but naturally did not choose to
admit it, his allegiance being vowed elsewhere. The drug altered
temperament, and with it the creed which is based mainly on
temperament. It scattered current convictions, roused dormant
speculations, and without damaging the reason switched it on to a new
track.

I can see all this now, but at the time I saw only stark madness and
the horrible ingenuity of the lunatic. While Vennard was ruminating on
his Bill, Cargill was going about London arguing like a Scotch
undergraduate. The Prime Minister had seen from the start that the
Home Secretary was the worse danger. Vennard might talk of his
preposterous Bill, but the Cabinet would have something to say to it
before its introduction, and he was mercifully disinclined to go near
St. Stephen's. But Cargill was assiduous in his att